A Last-Chance ‘Ghost’ Building in Taiwan Becomes a Deathtrap for Many
The New York Times
“I had no choice but to live here,” said one resident who survived a blaze that killed 46 of her neighbors and raised questions about lax safety standards.
KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan — Huang Chin-chih had heard disturbing stories about the “ghost building,” and the 58-year-old housemaid was not thrilled about moving in. She had heard about the gangs, the homeless people and the prostitution. She saw the drunk squatters, the dark corridors and the piles of garbage in the stairwells.
On Friday, three months after she moved in, Ms. Huang was feeling grateful not to be among the dead after a fire tore through the partly abandoned 13-story mixed-used building on Thursday night in the southern port city of Kaohsiung. The blaze killed 46 of her neighbors and injured dozens of others. It was Taiwan’s deadliest structural fire in more than two decades.
“I was afraid of this ghost building, but I had no choice but to live here,” said Ms. Huang, who had been out and returned to find her home engulfed in a raging inferno of orange and red flames. “I’m just feeling lucky I was not there that night.”
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